Untamed. Glennon Doyle. Dial Press 2020. 328 pages.
Glennon Doyle is the patron saint of women trying to break free of patriarchy. And I suppose I’m a little late to the party.
I heard Doyle speak in 2017, before this book was published and she was still riding the wave of her previous book, Love Warrior. I remember being entertained and moved by her words. Now, 6 years later, and with time to ruminate between essays, my appreciation is still strong but tempered a bit.
Her premise is clear — women deserve to be free; and her bona fides are compelling — bulimic as a child, drunk long into adulthood, forged by the right-wing church and parents bound by convention, unexpectedly single and pregnant in her 20s, trapped in a straight marriage that was “the right thing.” Through the many essays of this book, we learn her story and absorb her learned wisdom whence came her freedom. She is now, famously, married to soccer star Abby Wambach, raising three children with Abby and her best-friend/ex-husband Craig, affiliated with no religion and freed by the bounty of her writing to do whatever the fuck she wants (her language).
Doyle, as I, has a strong appreciation and agile use of metaphor. She begins the book with the story of a cheetah, Tabitha, in captivity, being taught by its trainers to share the behaviors and demeanor of Minnie, the Labrador retriever who shares her life and space, but prowling the fence line between “shows,” perhaps remembering or intuiting what it means to be a cheetah in the wild. “Tabitha, you’re not crazy” to want that life outside captivity, she says; “you’re a goddamned cheetah.” She ends, 65 essays later, with the story of a woman miserable in a yoga class who believes she cannot leave and a reminder that the doors — of a yoga studio, of a life — aren’t even locked.
Reading my wife’s copy of the book, I was not free to underline or write in the margins as is my practice, so I reflect here from memory of what compelled me and what left me cold.
This is very much a book about what makes a person free and happy, and what makes a family. It is written from a place of substantial privilege and from the anvil of the bona fides as I described above. It is also written to a predominantly white and middle class female audience. Her relationships are all up for discussion, the most intimate parts of her life laid bare to make her point and help others find themselves in her experiences and find their freedom in her freedom. It is mostly inspiring, encouraging and entertaining.
Some of my favorite parts were Doyle’s expressions of her introverted life. You’ll laugh out loud at the essay called Deliveries as she describes her internal processes when the doorbell rings. Unless you’re an extrovert and don’t get it.
It is only somewhat off-putting or annoying. But it is also that.
With one or two exceptions, and those exceptions told to make a point, Doyle seems to have the perfect answer in every situation, and seems far too willing to correct those around her who misspeak, or speak from a different or less developed truth. She tells of her fuck-ups; they just all seem to be in the past, with one or two exceptions (like meeting her ex-husband’s girlfriend). I was generally fine — though a little exhausted — until the moment in a pastor’s office when she corrects both the pastor’s language of affirmation offered to Abby and Abby’s own expression of her prior experience in leaving church. I wanted her to let someone else’s words just be. This doesn’t seem to be her style. She comes across at times as the one who discovered something and believes she is the first to have been there. Of course, I don’t think she really believes that, but…
One striking example: I, as a gay person who has battled the church over my right to exist, who has remained, who has maintained a relationship with God in the midst of it all, found myself cringing over her very specific “requirements” for talking with and about God (hence her correcting the clergy who said it in a different way). I surely affirm and embrace — and even find inspiration in — her personal ways of being in relationship with whatever is the Source of all. I just didn’t get the feeling that the favor would be returned. Her ways are fine and can perhaps be life-giving; so can mine.
In fact, there are many essays in which she tells of correcting the expressions of love and life and pain and joy and god and hope and despair and fear that are generously told her by others in her life. I guess there are times she didn’t correct people, but those didn’t make the cut.
Late in the book, Doyle offers essays on race and racism that seem somewhat out of place, like a commercial break before she goes back to personal stories of family and children. I suppose one could imagine that her very white female audience could use a primer, and perhaps she is the least threatening person to introduce the reality of racism into their lives, but it was a departure from her tone and focus otherwise. Similarly, the reality of economic disparity. A primer perhaps, but not her area of expertise.
I have a hard time imagining recommending this book to women of Color or women of lesser economic means, although I could be wrong about that. Doyle refers to herself regularly as an activist, but I would want to hear more of what she means when she uses that language. I believe her most fertile audience would be women escaping an evangelical life. Generally, this is a book that will resonate with women for whom the world feels constricting, who feel the maleness of the system telling them they must conform. (“Your next life will always cost you this one.” Expect to see that quoted in some future deb thing.) Mostly, women of a certain life experience will be inspired and perhaps many will find freedom in it. She’s a thoughtful, reflective person who broke out of a cage into which she’d been indoctrinated, and now wants to show others the way. I know women for whom it has been nothing short of salvation. That’s a noble vocation and a faithful path.
My recommendation, while this is an easy read and could be done in a few hours, is that the reader find a comfortable pace. Some will race hungrily through it and start again; others will find it tiring in its breathlessness, tiring in her always having just the right answer, even if only as a plot device. Take your time; or don’t. You’re a goddamned cheetah; the doors aren’t locked.